Malaysia to probe manifest of missing airliner

The identities of two European passengers on the flight had not been confirmed, in addition to two passengers travelling on stolen passports

Malaysian authorities were looking through the flight manifest of the Malaysia Airline jet missing for a day over the South China Sea, a senior official said Sunday.

“We will investigate the whole manifest,” Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters. “We will not only target the four people mentioned in the media but all those in the manifest.” The identities of two European passengers on the flight had not been confirmed, in addition to two passengers travelling on stolen passports, theMalaysian Insider reported online, citing an unnamed source.

The suspicious identities have fuelled speculation of a terrorist attack.

A Malaysian security analyst said the sudden disappearance of flight MH370, which left Kuala Lumpur early Saturday bound for Beijing, bore similarities to the PanAm flight 103 bombing in 1988.

The sudden loss of contact indicated that whatever happened “did not give time for the pilot or any people onboard the plane to react,” he said.

Hishammuddin said the main priority at the moment was to locate the missing aircraft, adding that Malaysia will enlist the assistance of foreign intelligence agencies in investigating the incident.

He urged the public not to make any speculations about the incident and wait for the results of the investigation.

Search and rescue workers from five countries have yet to spot any sign of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777—200 passenger jet, which was carrying 239 people from 14 countries.

“We have not been able to locate anything or see anything,” Azhaddin Abdul Rahman, deputy chief of Malaysia’s Civil Avian authority, told reporters.

Three Vietnamese rescue ships early Sunday reached the location of apparent oil slicks spotted from the air earlier, but found no sign of wreckage, and had not been able to confirm the slick, authorities said in Hanoi.

The United States was sending FBI agents and experts to help, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported late Saturday.

The agents will help review video from the Kuala Lumpur airport for images of departing passengers that can be checked in the bureau’s vast counter-terrorism database, the report said.

At least three US citizens, and an infant who could be a US citizen, were on board the plane. “This gives us entree” to the case, the official told the LA Times, speaking on condition of anonymity.